Getting up for school was always just as hard as going to sleep. I would stay up for hours, just thinking and rolling over in bed, and having to go to bed each night at eight PM didn't help much. And then, when I finally and actually fall asleep, it is usually around one in the morning. So, I end up with four or five hours or so of sleep each night because my mind just goes on a fritz every night, adding a larger addition to my loathing of waiting for my mind and body to fall prey to sleepy desires.

It's like a ritual - everyday, really.

They say humans need routine to live by, to really keep their sanity. Even "spontaneous" people make long-term plans for their future, and make to-do lists and keep a routine of some sort. Which kind of defeats the "spontaneous" part of their lives, doesn't it? Makes it seem like their isn't any spontaneity at all, really. Almost like it's just a word. I wish "getting up" was just a word too.

Unfortunately, it isn't.

My alarm is just as annoying as it is to get up and turn it off. I purposefully put it all the way across my room so I actually had to get up to turn it off. Personally, I thought it was a good idea when I first thought of it, and setting it up was just fine as well. However, every morning when I wake up, I easily regret putting it so far away - because once I'm up, I can't go back to sleep until much later, and my lack of sleep nowadays makes me want to just keel over, which may add to the reason of my occasional slip-up in character portrayal.

Rolling out of bed these days just gets harder, really. With my now foreboding lack of sleep, I often find myself sleeping through most of my alarm - or almost going back to sleep standing up. I think it may be insomnia, but I can't exactly self-diagnose, because, hey, isn't that just illegal? I don't know, personally.

Luckily, this morning is different, and I am already awake when my alarm starts to let off it's incessant ringing or buzzing or whatever noise it is that it makes. I have been awake all night, virtually afraid to go to sleep. Like always, I pretend to be asleep when my parents unlock my door to check on me, even though I was rolling over in bed for hours just repeating the word sleep over and over again in my head to force myself into the needed state of mind, but it came without success numerous times, as you can tell. It's odd that I don't have bags under my eyes from all of this.

Looking away from my alarm clock, I scan the blue walls of my room to move to my closet, keeping one hand on the wall to keep myself steady, because, like usual, I got out of bed too fast, making the water in my ears spin and creating a dizzy sensation that… well, you get the point, don't you? I should certainly hope so. My fingers drift over the blue paint to the wooden doorframe of my closet and pull the door to the side, peering inside wearily. Usually, the night before, I pick out my clothes (to get my parents off my case about it, but we'll get into that later), but I didn't last night for whatever reason that I didn't. I don't know any more.

I reach in in a half-stumble, realizing I was too far away to grab at any clothes. I loosely grab the sleeve of a white dress shirt, tugging on it slightly to pull myself closer, and it tips lightly in my direction on the hanger. Stepping close to the closet, I take it off the rack and spin it, holding it in front of me. It doesn't look wrinkled. Why are wrinkles bad, anyway? Without wrinkles, your brain would just be a useless mass of fat and water; and wrinkles means you're aged, and with age comes wisdom, doesn't it? Oh, how humanity confuses me.

In my muse, I had thrown the shirt back on my bed so it landed flatly, but the long sleeves fluttered down on top a little bit more slowly. I grunt, turning back to my closet. Pushing through the clothes, I grab at my usual turquoise hoodie, pulling it easily off the hanger. I throw it back on my bed without looking, my eyes already searching for a pair of pants. Truthfully, the hoodie I grabbed isn't the same one I had when I was little - I grew out of that years and years ago. But the colour and sense of the hoodie has just become a comfort-thing to me, and helps to keep me calm. It doesn't have sentimental value, really, but it's just something in my nature. A compulsive action, I suppose you could say.

The quiet now sinks in - my parents aren't usually up when I first get up - and I shiver slightly, realizing my room is a little more cold than comfortable for me. I quickly find a pair of pants - easily and most likely being black skinny jeans - and pull them off the hanger, turning back to wrap them over the hanger that holds my white shirt on the bed. I put the hoodie over it, zipping it up to hold everything together - pants, shirt, hoodie. It's always in that order, for whatever reason. Perhaps another neurotic impulse of mine.

Shaking my head with a small laugh, I turn and skip to the bathroom. I am really too tired to skip, but I am supposed to like skipping - it gives off a sense of joy and glee and whatever. I give a little, quiet whistle of some song that only I know and head to the bathroom. As I rasp my knuckles across the wood of the door, I wonder why I even bother to knock. My parents beat the idea into my head since I was little. Even back then, we didn't have locks on the doors, so I always knocked before entering. And, although I knew no one was up, I still knock. As usual, no one answers - no one ever has and no one certainly ever will.

I push the door open with a twist of the knob, and I suddenly feel a buzzing in my brain. It's a small, fizzy feeling that makes my neurons fry. It doesn't feel like I'm alone. However, peering into the dark of the bathroom, I see no one. My hand flies to the wall and flicks the light switch, but no one is there. I step into the room and move the door, checking behind it - no one. I look back up and hit the other light switch, which is the one that turns the light on above the bath-shower combination of my bathroom. Looking back to the tub, I jump when I swear that there is a silhouette behind the curtain. It's the shape of someone - most likely a boy - about my age or so, and they're just standing there as if nothing was the problem of being in someone else's bathroom at five-whatever in the morning. Nothing scary about that at all.

I can feel my heart pacing wildly in my chest and I swear that the boy in the shower must hear it too. Then, I notice, that I think he has the shower running. "Hello?" No one answers, and he runs a hand through his hair. Now, I'm simply terrified - it cannot be a trick of the light, and . I lick my lips and set my clothes on the counter. I gulp as I tentatively step forward to clutch at the shower curtain. I feel my mouth growing dry, and I'm scared to wits end. I know my parents won't be up for another hour, and even if they were, they would use their own bathroom instead of my own. Just thinking about the possibilities of who it could be - I'm a rather pessimistic person toward my own self-being due to my parents raising of their only child; who, is me, of course - makes my hand start to shake.

Keeping my eyes open, I swallow dryly, my confidence going up with it. I pull the shower curtain, thrusting it in one direction and stare inside to find it empty. And though the water had been running just a moment before, it wasn't now. My heart gave a wild thump against my ribs, and I almost felt tears well-up in my eyes. I begin to force myself to calm down, by repeating words that make me calm over and over again in my head - you know, like, mind over matter. Slowly but surely, it works like I thought it would.

It's odd… you know, that I haven't torn a hole in the shower curtain with how tight I am gripping it. But, you know, the weird person that was standing it my shower just a moment ago was odd too.

Forcing myself to loosen my grip, I sigh softly, looking over the tub. I still see no one. Maybe I am actually still asleep and I just never noticed that I felt asleep and - bullshit! I scoff and lean over the turn the shower on, turn back around after closing the curtain, crossing my arms to take off my shirt. I step in front of the mirror as I take the hem of my shirt in my fingertips, looking up to the same face I see in the mirror everyday.

It's funny, my reflection. Every time I look, I swear it must be a girl - just the same long, slightly curly blonde hair, same bright dodger blue eyes, same pouty pink lips and same round face that I have. Except, when I do my double-take, I realize it's just me - with the same long hair, blue eyes, red lips and curved face. Oh, that's right. I do look like a girl, don't I? Since I was almost nine or ten, I had let my hair grow out. When it was long enough to fall over my shoulders, I felt normal. However, I was surprised my parents let me grow it out. But… when I talked to them, they said it was okay. They always wanted a girl anyway, didn't they? Well, they got it! Those thrice damned fools… I could just… just…

I didn't realize it until now, but I had loosened the grip from my shirt, and the hand that was once of the end of my shirt was now tracing my jaw line. I turn to look deeper into the mirror, leaning over the sink and up on my tip-toes. Every morning I do this - trace every line that my face has as if I can somehow erase it and then reconstruct it over. I wish I could. Maybe then I wouldn't be teased or made fun of by the boys. Of course, I wouldn't fit in with the girls anymore, and that thought just doesn't appeal to me in the slightest. Lightly, as I think about the ways of being effeminate or not, I tug at the skin on my cheeks, my eye lids, and make a few funny faces in the mirror. I huff once again and feel the steam beginning to crawl up the back of legs from the shower. I shiver slightly and turn again to my right, moving to turn the vent fan on. The fan then hums into life as it begins sucking in the steam, and I gaze up at it with a little smirk.

Turning back to the mirror with a little smile on my face, I gaze into the mirror. My reflection stares back at me - that hideous creature hiding itself in the mirror. I frown deeply. However, in the corners of the mirror, I can see the steam starting to stick and fog the silver-glass, so I now it's almost now or never. I cross my arms back over my chest and grab the hem of my shirt. I shiver when the shirt reaches half-way up my chest, feeling a swirl of cold enclose around me. I'm standing in the middle of a room that's beginning to fill itself with steam, so how can I feel cold? I open my eyes and blink into the mirror. For a moment, I see someone standing behind me, running their fingers over my exposed back, and I shiver. The feeling tingles - their fingertips just ghosting over the skin. I can feel the blood pouring into my cheeks and exfoliating my skin along with the skin, emanating a little blush, and then I swear I hear someone snicker lightly behind me. I gasp out as the fingers then prod my back, and by this point, my eyes are shut tightly as I try to hold by a muffled cry that barely wanders out into the rising steam. Clutching the front of my shirt in my hands, I continue pulling it down, but the hand seems to beg to differ and pins the shirt to the top of my back with their other invisible hand.

I feel something on my neck and I moan out when the indiscernible fingers trace the edges of my rather curved hips, then places their hand palm-down on my side. The fingers feel light, but I can tell they are that of a boy. Well, not a boy, per se, but they are definitely not that of a man, either. But the hands are definitely connected to a male body. I throw my head back as I feel him pressing something wet and cool and somehow warm still into the crook of my neck, his hand gripping lightly at my thigh. What the hell am I doing? I know what's happening to my body, and though it has never happened before and it feels deliriously good, I want it to stop because it can't possibly be real, because there was no one there.

The ghostly man must have known what I had thought, because he squeezed harder of the inside of my thigh, making me squeak slightly and bite my lip. I move my eyes again, my fingers clutching at the sides of my pants. This is weird, but it feels so right. I close my eyes tightly and then release my pants at my sides and lash my hand backwards with a wild swing of my body, swiveling to hit him square on. But, my hand doesn't connect to anything, and I end up stumbling when my hand comes back around, turning myself into a dizzy half-spin. I wobble slightly and try to catch myself on the sink, but my reflexes aren't exactly the epitome of possibility, so I end up crashing back onto the floor, releasing a loud grunt as I fall backward.

My hair falls in my face and puff to blow it out of the way. "Oh, hamburgers…" Just my luck, right? Whoever's sick joke this was must be laughing their ass off right now.

And, yes, of course I believe in ghosts! I mean, of all the times that Kenny has come back as one of them, I am kind of used to it now and… the rest I won't get into at this time, because that boy drives me mad, to the brink of my very existence inside this shell of a boy. He's so…

I push myself off the ground, scoffing at my own thoughts. Of course, the "ghostly" person could not have been Kenny - Kenny's straight after all, isn't he? So I would really rather not get my hopes up that it had been him.

Nonetheless, I try to continue my morning.

As I stand up again, I walk over to the light switch. My fingers on it, I look back over my shoulder. There isn't anyone there, of course. Looking back to the lights witch, I find myself wishing that it was my imagination instead of a ghost. Any normal person would do the same. Although I certainly wouldn't mind the company, as I never usually had any, but it would mean that I could go somewhere else than this damned podunk town - even if it was a mental hospital that wasn't Hell's Pass, it was better than this ever-glorious shit-hole.

I shake my head, trying to keep the anger of this town back down inside myself and push the switch down, making the light slowly dim out with a little click sound. I turn back around, examining the bathroom in the almost complete darkness. There is still a little light filtering in from the window over the closed blinds from the sun, which must just be on the brink of the horizon by now. Reaching over myself, I pull my shirt off without pausing to wait for ghostly hands to trail my body this time. And when my shirt is completely off, even then I don't pause to wait for them. And they don't come, even as my pants disappear and my underwear as well.

By now, you, if you exist that is, are probably asking why I am taking a shower in the dark. I do it because it makes me feel like I am still asleep - the dark, the rush of the warm water over skin, the sleepy feeling already having settled in you? It's just something that I have grown into the habit of.

I love taking showers. It makes me feel clean, and I completely adore that feeling. It sounds weird to you, doesn't it? Well, don't answer that, because if I am talking to you, and you answer, that means I answered myself, which means I am crazy, and I'll be sent to the loony bin -- wait, no, actually. Please, do answer that. I need to get out the hell out of here of here.

But what was it that I was getting at? I digress so easily nowadays. It's just another thing about my faltering stature of Butters - he's slipping, and like using wet hands to pull a man smothered in Butters, it's hard to hold on… look! There I go again. Talking about butter? I must be insane. Please, get me out of here.

By now, I've stepped into the shower and have already shampooed my hair. The water makes my hair stick down to my back, which feels rather… awkward. And though I have had my long hair quite a long time - no pun intended - I am still unused to the feeling of when it sticks to my back. That's the only part of the shower than I hate. It makes me feel suffocated.

But… I can't exactly leave just yet. I still have things to do, which are slightly important to me, but I do want to leave. This town means nothing to me any more. When I was little, I thought it was the whole world, and I despised it so. But, my indifferent, happy exterior had thought it was the greatest thing in the world. However, he had truly thought it was a disgusting place. It was predictable - just another little town no one had ever heard of and no one would ever want to hear of, and if they did, they would just brush it aside as they had everything else in the world. Yet, though I was filled with putrid disgust for it so, I had to stay. At least I until I was old enough to leave, and then I would leave without another word. And that day of which I had dreamed of so long would be here soon enough. Then I would be vanquished forthwith of this putrescent, fetid place.

Still, I must accomplish what I set out to do so long ago. I need to get a few things done even before I leave. Some are unimportant, others impact my future greatly, then there is one that… I know I can't do. I can't fulfill that one, and that is the one that you will learn later, of which I wish I never had to think of. It's that of which I share in common with dearest Butters.

But that is past me now, it seems. Well, it's before me, really, as I will have to deal with it later in the day, as I do every other week day. Because, now, I am stepping out of the shower. I grope absently for a towel, of which I find after turning off the water. I press the fluffy-feeling object to my face and step over of the shower, which seems to be a harder feat than stepping into the shower, as I mentioned before, taking a shower is like being asleep for me, which is never usually good in the first place. Pushing a few wet strands of hair from my face, I wrap the towel around my waist, and look back to the towel rack, squinting in the darkness to see if there is another one. Luckily, there is, and I grab at it, tugging it gently so it falls off the rack and into my grasp completely.

I always use two towels now. It's just habit - one to wrap up my hair, and the other to dry myself off. I don't know why I do - I just do. But at any rate, I now feel uncomfortable in the bathroom. The steam has now clung itself intently to the mirrors, dotting and glazing it over with moisture so I can't see my own reflection aside a blur of colours. This fact always unnerves me, so I try to get out of the bathroom quickly.

Already, I step out into the hall, leaving the bathroom door open so the steam can go away just a little bit faster, my hair still up in the twisted-towel above my head, clothes I walked into the bathroom with now covering my body. Making my way back to my room now, I wonder if today would be any more different from the any of the other days in South Park. It was unlikely, though, so I quickly pushed the thought from my mind as I stepped into my room to finish getting ready for school.

- - -

The days in South Park are usually as cold as their nights. The temperature rarely changes much - even in the summer, it is still fairly cold, even though it's little podunk natives will be wearing shorts and t-shirts by that time, maybe. Any person from Miami would immediately put on a jacket and look at us as if we were crazy, but that's just how the non-natives were. Though, people rarely came here unless it was family, and most people here weren't likely to know anyone from Miami in the first place, so it was more an abstract thought.

See? This is exactly what this place does to my brain. Here I am walking to the bus stop to go to school, and my mind is in Miami. I mean, really - Miami? As if I'll ever get there soon. Might as well stop dreaming now.

Speaking of dreaming, I must be dreaming. I think I see someone else at my bus stop. Of course, there are many people at my bus stop - but, they all come just before the bus does. I usually go a lot earlier than the bus.

But, there is someone there. I can't exactly see what they look like from this distance - I'm almost two blocks away. This is… highly unusual. No one ever leaves their house before the sun starts to come up! Well, except me, that is, but that's besides the point. I even left earlier this morning just so I could avoid coming into the contact with my parental units.

Now, the person is a little more clear to see, as I am a little closer now. I can tell it's a boy. And - be still my heart - I only know one person who wears that much orange.

I step up behind him, fingers tightly gripping my backpack straps as I look at him. His hood is up as usual and he is staring blankly at the road. But, he seems to become aware of my presence and turns around to - I think - smile brightly at me. He mumbles something over his hood that sounds relatively close to "Hey, Butters."

I can't manage to say anything back to him. I just stare straight-forward at what I can see of his face, with what is most possibly the idiotic dumb-founded expression on my lips. I finally train myself back from my void of staring at him when some hair falls in my face. Brushing it back, I say weakly, "Hey, Ken," and smile brightly as Butters would usually do. I need to keep up the act for as long as I can. "Uh - isn't your bus stop on the other side of town?"

He stares back at me a moment, and I almost become entranced in his eyes. After what seems like an awkward moment that lasted forever ( no, it just seemed so to me ), he reaches up and takes down his hood, then looks back up to me. "Well, you see, Buttercup…" he didn't even have to finish his sentence, because I knew that he was probably going to go on about some sexcapade in which he got what he wanted and then left. Because that's what it always is. Because it's a Kenny McCormick, and he likes sexual-themed things. It disgusts me, but it also entices me. "I died last night -" my heart skipped an eager beat. "- in this side of town, so why would I take my time to go to the other side of town to hang out with Stan and Kyle and fat-ass at the bus stop when I could just come here and talk to you. I mean, it was a lot closer, and we will all end up in the same place anyway." He gave a little shrug as he finished off his sentence, and I think my heart stopped beating just a little while before.

"Oh --" I said. And then Butters continued in a very worried tone, "I mean - are you okay? How did you die?" Both Butters and myself were commonly worried when it came to Kenny's death - that was one thing we had it common. Butters and I always worried about Kenny. We both hated it when he died, and we always cried if we knew about it. Everyone else in this town was used to his deaths - to the point where his best friends don't even look in his direction when it happens, and their lines of "They killed Kenny" and "You bastards!" died out long, long ago. But we still worried. To the point where we would cry until he came back to life once again.

"Ahh, I'm fine - I was just hit by a truck." He says it like it's nothing. It's everything now.

Both Butters and I frown deeply at him. "Where did you go this time?" I am trying not to cry that he died, and I blink away the tears at threaten to spill themselves. He would probably just laugh and call me a pussy or something for crying over his death like Cartman always does.

"What? Oh, I went to Purgatory this time." He said it without emotion for the concept, and for a moment, my heart lurched into my throat. Maybe it had been him just a little bit ago when I was… no. No, it wasn't. It couldn't have been him. Butters didn't let it affect him though. Instead, he just asked, "When did you get back?" I secretly hoped that he would confirm my suspicions. Just a little thing to keep me going, and a little more to get me out of this town. But, then I hoped he would say hours before - long, long before I had gotten up from bed. Just to help steady me.

"Just a little while ago."

I felt dizzy. Butters stood straight, and even managed to walk up next to Kenny, whose eyes followed him as he did.

I looked up to Kenny, but I wanted to avert my gaze. "Oh. So, you weren't there long, were you?" To this, Kenny only shrugged, giving a little, "Nah, not really." He lifted a hand, averting his gaze to across the street as the wind blew toward him, running his hand through his blond hair. Butters and I both stared at him. He was like a god trapped in a teenage boy's body.

Although he was poor, he had a gorgeous face. There wasn't any objection to be found on his skin - no blemishes, no freckles. I guess he was just one of those lucky people who when they hit puberty, just didn't get growing pains or acne. It was one thing I shared in common with Kenny too. I never had any blemish on my face, and my parents said I should have thanked God that I didn't, which made me laugh out loud at the face of God and Butters pray. And then those two bastards who proclaim themselves my parents grounded me because it wasn't normal for a teenager to not get acne in puberty. Those dirty…

Kenny interrupted me with a little tap on my shoulder, smiling down at me, keeping his hand on my shoulder after pushing my hair out of the way. "You know, Buttercup," he said, almost in a quiet whisper. "You would make a really pretty girl."

Was it possible for the Kenny McCormick to call a girl "pretty?" If it was, I had certainly, not in my entire life, never once heard him call any being on the face of the planet "pretty." He thought I was pretty? Well, if I was a girl - I'd be pretty?

Butters smiled brightly back at him, and I could feel my heart pounding so hard against my chest that I was entirely certain Kenny could hear it. But if he did - he obviously didn't take notice of it. "Well, gee, thanks, Ken," he told him, and then we gave him the biggest, brightest smile we two could muster. And, for once, I didn't need to force myself to smile. Well, I never need to force myself into a good mood around Kenny. He was always something different. This boy…

This Kenny McCormick was the most important thing I had in common with Butters.